


we can work it out

by keptein



Series: don't carry the world upon your shoulders [2]
Category: Marvel, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Amazing Spider-Man (Movies - Webb)
Genre: Multi, Polyamory, Threesome - F/M/M, Triad (Relationship)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 02:51:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1588904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keptein/pseuds/keptein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a careless mistake that lands Peter in the ER for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we can work it out

**Author's Note:**

> sorry about this taking so long - it was mostly done, and then i went to see tasm 2, and i couldn't touch it for a while. sorry. thanks again to theappleppielifestyle & cedes for encouragement and stuff. uwu

It's a careless mistake that lands Peter in the ER for the first time. He gets a lot of strange looks sitting in the waiting room, pressing towels already wet with blood to his stomach, and he doesn't know whether it's the mask or the two inch diameter metal tube sticking out of his abdomen.

Probably both. “Sorry,” Peter tells the lady next to him. His vision is blurry, and he wishes he could take the mask off to breathe properly. “Sor – _oh_.”

“Sir,” a nurse says quickly, hurrying up to him, “come along, sir, we'll help you.”

Peter gratefully leans into him as he stands up, biting his teeth together whenever a step jostles the tube. “Yeah, no –“ he gets out, before he has to stop again.

“Damn supers,” he thinks he hears someone mutter before he blacks out.

*

When he comes to, the spider tells him they've moved, and it's almost light out. His fingers scrabble at the edge of his mask before he realized what that means – he's still wearing it, he hasn't been compromised. Not beyond repair, anyway.

The thought is worth waiting for a breath of fresh air.

He moves off the bed slowly, whatever painkillers they'd given him long worn off by now, but the wound in his stomach has been stitched up and his thigh has been bandaged.

Peter grabs for his medical chart, because he needs to know whether his thigh was fractured or not, but his eyes won't make sense of the letters on the page. With a quiet noise of frustration he puts the chart under his arm and limps to the window, working the hatches soundlessly until the window's open and cool night air streams in. He finds purchase on the windowsill and starts moving towards home, hiding in the last vestiges of night.

 _Ir went noy gopd wont be @ school_ , he texts MJ and Gwen once he's home, exhaustion making his smartphone keyboard much harder to manipulate than usually. Then he takes a few shaky steps towards his bed and falls onto it, a deep, painful sleep following him.

*

Insistent knocking on the front door wakes him, hours later.

“Oh, hello,” he hears Aunt May say – he didn't know she was home, she must have a late shift today.

“Is Peter home?” Gwen asks, the rough, tight cadence of her voice instantly forcing him further into the land of the living.

“I don't know,” Aunt May says, “I'm sure the two of you can go up and check.”

“Thank you,” MJ says, and Peter rubs his forehead. They're both here.

Of course they're both here.

He gets in a sigh before his door is opened, and Gwen and MJ look down at him – MJ looks pleased to see him alive, while Gwen's face is pinched in worry.

“I'm fine,” he tells them, trying for a disarming smile.

Gwen's frown deepens.

“You're all over the web,” MJ says, then - “ha, ha, web.”

“ _MJ_ ,” Gwen says.

“What? He's clearly not dying, he said he was fine – ”

Gwen throws her hands up. “Whatever,” she says. “Show me the wounds, Peter.”

He reluctantly throws the duvet off his body, exposing the torn suit he never got around to taking off and the stitches in his stomach. MJ sits down by his computer as Gwen leans down to inspect Peter's injuries, and Peter is too slow to tell MJ not to touch anything.

“Hey, is this your chart?” He picks it up from the desk, eyes scanning over the page.

“Yeah, it is,” Peter says. Gwen's hands are warm on his stomach, but she's not touching anything that hurts. He looks down at her – she meets his eyes, shaking her head minutely and biting her lip.

“Shit,” MJ says.

“What does it say?” Peter asks, distracted by his own thoughts about kissing Gwen's teeth away from her lip and replacing them with his own.

“Your left leg's fractured, you bruised your _brain_ and there's eight stitches in your abdomen,” MJ reads, then looks over at Peter with wide eyes. “It doesn't mention anything about internal organs, so apparently you got really, really lucky.”

Peter sighs with relief. “That's good,” he says.

“Yeah,” MJ said. His mouth is twisting. “You could have _died_.”

“I wouldn't have died,” Peter says dismissively, and Gwen makes a small, pained noise. She won't look at him now. MJ comes to sit next to Peter on the bed, and he pulls Gwen up so she's sitting on his lap, both of them turned towards Peter.

He leans into their warmth, closing his eyes briefly. He's still tired.

“Did you take care of her, at least?” Gwen asks, muffled by the way she's pressing her face into Peter's shoulder.

“Yeah,” he says. “Agonee won't bother the fine citizens of New York City anymore.”

MJ kisses the side of his face, almost hesitantly, and drops a kiss on the top of Gwen's head afterward.

Peter breathes out.

*

They don't really leave him alone after that. Peter loves them, he's pretty sure he does, but they're _always_ _around_. MJ is the first one to come over the next day, explaining that Gwen will be on her way as soon as her Chem class finishes.

“Okay,” Peter says. “Do you wanna watch a movie?” MJ nods, and he tucks Peter into his side like he's fragile.

It's odd, but he doesn't object.

Gwen, who shows up just before it's over, keeps a careful two inches of air between their bodies.

That, too, is pretty odd.

*

Peter doesn't really get it until a few days later – his stomach is healing rapidly, but his leg is still uncertain under him, a weak spot. “- but I'll just compensate for it,” Peter tells Gwen, bouncing slightly on his own bed. He'd suggested going to hers, but she said he shouldn't move around too much, and then promised him kisses if he waited for MJ and her to get there after school. Peter's weak in the face of kisses.

MJ is there too, trying to do his English assignment on Peter's floor – he hadn't needed any kisses to persuade him, because all three of them know he jumps at the opportunity to be anywhere else than home, but he got some anyway.

“Hold on,” Gwen says. “You're not going out as Spider-Man tonight.”

MJ looks up at them.

“Uhm, yeah, I am,” Peter says.

“No,” Gwen says.

Peter makes a noise of confusion.

“I'm with Gwen on this,” MJ says hesitantly. “You should probably wait until you're better.”

Gwen looks conflicted, but she finally nods in agreement. “You still can't _walk_ properly,” she says. “You're not even back in school.”

“So? I don't need to walk, I can just -” Peter waves a hand “- swing.”

“ _Peter_ ,” Gwen says.

“What? What's that supposed to mean?” He looks between them. “Guys, seriously, this is just a set-back. An occupational hazard, or whatever. I can't just stop being Spider-Man because Agonee clocked me a little too well.”

“I don't want you to go out until you're better,” Gwen says finally. “Please?”

“You'll be operating at half efficiency for longer if you exert yourself now,” MJ says, like Peter hasn't learned to see through his pseudo-medical bullshit ages ago. “It's better to return to peak efficiency _then_ go fight crime.”

Peter sighs in frustration. “Fine, whatever,” he says.”You win.”

“Sorry,” MJ says. Gwen stays quiet, but she sits next to him and presses into him like he'd understand her if she could just be _closer_.

“You should have been in Chem class today,” she starts after a pause, “Kate did this amazing impression of Mr. Burns...”

*

Even all that, Peter can handle. Well, he keeps a low profile when he goes out as Spider-Man that night, which basically amounts to following Gwen and MJ's advice. But the straw that breaks the camel's back, the camel's back in this case being Peter's patience, is the way they keep _bringing him stuff_.

“Man, my throat is really dry,” Peter absently comments at one point, and Gwen hurries to fetch him a glass of water.

“When did my bed get so hard,” he complains later, and MJ asks Aunt May if they have any extra pillows.

“I wanna swing by the corner shop and pick up a copy of Popular Mechanics,” he tries, and both Gwen and MJ say they'll go, he can just wait here, there's no need for him to exert himself.

And yes, it's funny at first, when he spends a couple of days seeing what they'll do just because he wants something, but it's also _annoying_ – he feels coddled, infantilized, and that's sure as hell not a good feeling.

Peter has always been left to himself, and he's always been regarded as competent, whether it was Uncle Ben asking him to fix some plumbing problem or other, Jessica asking him to take some pictures for the yearbook, or the city, asking for Spider-Man's help. That MJ and Gwen, who are becoming terrifyingly important terrifyingly quickly, don't allow him to walk down the stairs by himself …

It grates on him.

*

“Aunt May, I’m going out,” Peter says. “Don’t wait up, okay?”

“I’ll try,” she replies loudly from the living room. “Be safe!”

“Yeah, love you,” Peter says, grabbing his jacket. He tries to say it every time he leaves, now, even though it still makes him squirm a little. He hurries out the door – MJ and Gwen don’t know where he’s going, and to be frank Peter doesn’t quite know either. All he knows is that the text Gwen sent him half an hour ago, a “do you wanna hang out?” which, from Gwen, is a statement, not a question – that text made his bones itch and his skin feel a size too small, so here he is. Running away. Literally.

Which, honestly, is pretty much on par for the course.

Being Spider-Man has taught him a lot about New York, its back alleys and roof structures and who usually hangs their laundry on clothes lines when he’s really in a pinch, and it’s really no effort at all to be standing in front of Flash Thompson’s modest two-story building when his leg aches too much for him to keep running.

His subconscious isn’t very subtle, leading him to the one guy who might be more emotionally stunted than he is – but Peter shrugs and takes it for the refuge it is.

After a moment’s hesitation, he rings the doorbell.

Luckily, Flash is the one to open the door. “Peter?” he says, frowning. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Do you wanna hang out?” Peter asks, but in the Gwen way. Huh. Clearly a sign of them spending too much time together.

“Sure,” Flash says after a pause. “You aren’t on the run from the cops or something, right? I mean, my ma – ”

“Nah,” Peter says. “Just needed a breather from Gwen and MJ.”

“Ah,” Flash says knowingly. “The girlfriend being needy? I get it.”

Ew, Peter thinks. He remembers now why they don’t hang out, and the irritation jumps into his throat. “You _know_ Gwen, why would you talk about her like that?”

Flash shrugs. “I dunno, man, I thought you were here for some bro code solidarity or whatever,” he says and finally steps aside to let Peter in.

“Sure, but not your casual misogyny.”

Flash shrugs again. “Okay, I’ll watch it. You wanna play FIFA?”

Peter nods. Flash shouts to his mother that he’s having a friend over, and they go upstairs.

*

“Okay, dude, dude, I gotta ask,” Flash starts after his fourth consecutive win over Peter’s team. “How does MJ fit into it?”

“You really wanna know?” Peter replies, and Flash screws up his face.

“Never mind, forget I asked.”

Peter smiles a little and turns back to the TV.

*

At one point, Flash makes a show of yawning so wide that his jaw makes a sound. “Well, I’m gonna turn in,” he says pointedly when Peter fails to react. “Are you going home?”

“Can I stay?” Peter asks, looking over at him.

“Sure, ma won’t mind, I don’t think,” Flash says, looking like it doesn’t matter much to him. “We have a spare bedroom down the hall. Don’t do anything nasty, I’ll have to wash the sheets.”

“ _Ew_ ,” Peter says. “What kind of people do you usually have over? Actually – don’t answer that.”

Flash follows Peter to the guest bedroom, and Peter sits on the bed, looking at him expectantly.

“Are you coming to school tomorrow?” Flash asks. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

Peter shakes his head. “Probably not.”

“Okay,” Flash says – Peter takes a second to marvel at how weirdly accepting Flash is of everything, ever since they reached a tentative truce on the whole bully-victim thing. “Sleep as long as you want, then, but don’t mess anything up, okay? I’m the one who has to clean it up.”

“No problem,” Peter says. When Flash starts to turn, he says, “And, uh – thanks. For, you know, letting me in and not asking any questions and stuff.”

“Bro code solidarity, man,” Flash says, and grins at Peter over his shoulder.”G’night, dude. And I was serious, no whacking off in my house.”

“Jesus – I get it!”

*

So Peter spends the afternoon in a house not his own, playing Flash’s video games and eating his food. Flash’s parents, who are kind but chronically uninterested in their own family, are both at work, and Peter feels only a twinge of discomfort at lounging around in their living room without permission. When the clock nears three, he makes sure to lock the door and leaves through a window, feeling settled in his own skin in a way he hasn’t since he fought Agonee.

He suits up and takes the long way home, spending a few hours in a couple of playgrounds – a thing he’d picked up after there had been a series of child kidnappings. Even now, one or two of the parents will approach him and thank him, even though he hadn’t been instrumental in the case at all. It’s one of those things that adds up, that makes suiting up and getting hurt worth it. One of those things that makes it clear Peter can never choose any life other than the one he had now – as long as he can, he has to be Spider-Man.

Finally, he’s home, checking in on Aunt May as he heads to his room. “Hey,” she says, putting her book on her night stand.

“You’re in bed early,” he remarks.

“And you’re home late,” she points out, eyebrows raised.

Peter grins sheepishly. “I was out,” he says. “Hung out with Flash.”

Aunt May’s eyebrows raise even further. “Okay,” she says, and they talk for a little while before she picks up her book again. “Good night.”

He nods, and heads to his own room. He was planning on wasting a couple of hours on Reddit, but by his keyboard lies his phone, blinking every so often to show that it’s received at least one message. If he touches it, Gwen's message will still be open.

He doesn’t want to see what else she and MJ have sent him, because he knows he needs an excuse - Aunt May mentioned that they had both come looking for him - but the fact that he needs an excuse feels overwhelming all over again. So Peter ends up pulling his window open instead and slipping out into the night.

When he comes back home, at three in the morning, he texts them both.

_Sorry_

*

“Sorry?” Gwen is standing in the door of Peter’s room, looking like her hair should crackle with fury. MJ stands behind her, mouth pulled down.

“Well, yeah,” Peter says, closing the browser and hurriedly putting his computer to sleep. “I am sorry. I just needed to get away a little.”

“What the _hell_ , Peter,” Gwen says, and walks to the middle of the room - MJ darts behind her and sits on Peter’s bed, still quiet. Peter frowns at him, his silence increasingly uncharacteristic.

“Don’t you have class?” He asks Gwen, in a futile attempt to stave off her frustration.

“Hannity let us out early,” MJ says.

“ _Why_?” Gwen asks, looking at Peter, and the room goes quiet.

“I don’t know,” Peter says, trailing off. “Does it matter?”

“You just up and disappeared, of course it fricking matters,” Gwen says angrily.

“For barely a day! Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

“It wasn’t very long,” MJ agreed, but the words were hollow.

Gwen looks between them for a long moment, then exhales quickly, an angry huff. “Peter,” she starts, then breathes out again, slower this time. The corners of her mouth are twitching slightly, and her eyes are big and shiny - Peter doesn’t want to look at her, has seen her like this too many times already. “You know it’s not about that.”

“So you say,” he says, even though he knows that’s not fair - he knows Gwen gets anxious when she can’t get in touch with him, but it’s not like he dropped off the map on _purpose_. He totally didn’t mean to leave his phone, and it feels like she’s accusing him of being that careless, of purposely making her feel this way.

“ _Peter_ ,” MJ says sharply, and Peter groans, throws his hands up. It’s not like MJ even _gets_ _it_. He looks over at him, and MJ shrugs, a half-heartedly apologetic motion.

“You know what,” Gwen says abruptly, “Maybe you were right, maybe we should all take a break. A breather might be a good idea now anyway.”

“ _What_ ,” Peter says, almost breathless. “No, no, no.”

“Then _react_ ,” Gwen cries. “You - both of you - you’re just - do you even want to do this, Peter, since you’re so eager to get away?”

“That’s not what it was about!” he protests quickly. “I just needed - a breather, like you said, a short break -” he’s not disagreeing with Gwen, he realizes faintly, he’s just repeating what she just said “- but that doesn’t mean I want to _break up_ , I just. I just needed some air.”

Gwen looked frustrated. “Why didn’t you just tell me? Or - or MJ? You didn’t have to just leave like that, that was - not a good move, Peter.” She clears her throat slightly, closing her eyes. “I was afraid for you.”

“I know,” Peter says, heart in his throat. “I was -” he breathes in, out, says it quickly, “I’m afraid you’re going to make me choose.”

“We’ve _talked_ about that,” Gwen says. “I promised you I’d never make you choose between me or the suit.” Her lips twist as she says it.

“Promises are easy to break,” Peter says.

“You should have told us. Don’t you trust us?” MJ says. “Or -” he waves his hand, “Gwen, at least, I know I’m, uh, the newcomer.”

“What?” Peter and Gwen say, almost simultaneously.

“No, no, I trust you guys -” Peter starts, while Gwen says,

“You don’t think that, do you?”

MJ shrugs again, looking surprisingly clear-eyed as he looks at them. Gwen moves before Peter does, settling down next to him and leaning heavily into his side. His arm comes up around her waist, and Peter - Peter stays on his chair, fingers drumming a pattern on his knee.

“I don’t want to break up,” Gwen says finally.

MJ and Peter breathe sighs of relief.

“However,” she continues, “we clearly need to communicate better. Get over here, Peter.”

An uncertain smile grows on his face, and he trots over to them, waiting until they both tug him down so the three of them are lying in a heap on his bed, and he can feel Gwen’s soft sweater and MJ’s shirt scratching his skin at the same time.

“Can we not do the heavy feelings discussion today, though?” MJ asks belatedly, after they’ve settled against each other. “I don’t really think I’m up for it.”

“Okay,” Gwen sighs, and tilts her head when Peter noses at her neck, burying his head in the hollow between her throat and MJ’s.

“Hey,” Peter tells them quietly. “I think we can declare our first fight ever to be over. What _up_.”

Three-handed high fives aren’t as easily managed as Peter imagined, but they can practice. They have time.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on [tumblr](http://keptein.tumblr.com) \- come love gwen stacy with me.


End file.
